I have simply mesh smoothed main hand and one of morphs responsible for holding glass like in that cutscene, exported them, converted morph mesh into morph and hex pasted both into tommy taxi driver model. It's important to make sure that morph verticles IDs are corresponding to the same verticles IDs of main hand model.

I'm surprised no one did it, it's was easy to figure out and to make Whole character model can be made into HD using this method.

I have simply mesh smoothed main hand and one of morphs responsible for holding glass like in that cutscene, exported them, converted morph mesh into morph and hex pasted both into tommy taxi driver model. It's important to make sure that morph verticles IDs are corresponding to the same verticles IDs of main hand model.

I'm surprised no one did it, it's was easy to figure out and to make Whole character model can be made into HD using this method.

I have created rest of the poses for both hands, just have to convert and test them. I was also looking at other character models. Regarding cutscene ones (with HIGH in name) all but Sarah uses same hands model but most of them without that one pose for holding the glass. So these ones can be easily replaced. All other characters + Sarah would require a lot more work becouse their hands are part of their base body model.

Well, very nice indeed! Thank you for this. Now we only need those competent modellers. Anyway, if you put any high quality parts of the characters together, I will gladly add them to the list and build, even unfinished...

Btw, as Harry noted, it would surely be possible to automate the process of the conversion somehow...

For the hands mesh into morph you mean? It is automated... somewhat I have created excel template which does all the magic. I'm just imputing vertexes in hex and voilŗ I hope you didn't think I was doing it manualy XD Although for pasting them into character models I'd have to do it manualy, but that's not that much of work. I tried to write a 010 Editor script for copy/paste stuff from one file to another but I couldn't get it to work.

Before I start doing it I recall that one patch changed these models, something about the eyes. But I don't remember which and I don't remember which eyes were better - after or before patch. So is it worth to copy them to both versions or just choose the better one (but which )?

Harryís the guy who made all of the models. I substitute here for him too, since heís even more engaged in his school affairs than I am. But this got him talking. He would also be more competent in what youíre talking about rather than me, but thatís how it is. Competent people already do stuff.

I know what eyes you mean. Damn... Iím going to offend somebodyís good will again, like I did in the initial post... We looked around at other remastering attempts back then and those alien eyes made us angry. I canít find it now for the life of me, but I think it was only a matter of textures... High models of characters have separate eye textures, so I believe it was only a texture change, unrelated to modeling.

No, models were changed, 1.0s have modeled eyeballs and one more mesh behind eyes which I'm not sure what is supposed to do - maybe eyes depth? While 1.2s eyeballs are just 3 vertexes and no additional mesh.

Well, donít know anything about those. Unless they were those I thought were made only using a different texture, which might be these from here http://forum.mafia-game.ru/showthread.php?t=2109 only the link there is dead. Anyway! If it were those, then I would build on the original characters. But what do I know... Whatís the plan? You only want to put the hands on, or would you like to look at some other parts as well?

Btw, those automated scripts along with some instructions could be useful in general for people who want to change characters. You might get some cookies in an individual thread...

*Edit: Oh, I think get it now! You mean the original game patch changed the models as well. Differences in version 1.0 and 1.2. Well... interesting. But that makes more sense now. Donít know about that too, though.

I have pasted hands into 3 models to check how it looks: http://mafiascene.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=127982#127982 . After pasting and running game for the first time I noticed that left hand had flipped normals... That was seriously pissing off I'm also not sure if I shouldn't remake them a bit to make knuckles stand out more

Yes, I meant official game patches. I wanted to write tutorials on everything I learned in that one year but the moment I think about it I'm like http://nooooooooooooooo.com/ . For the tutorial on hd models read below.

My positive attitude on whole models into hd also was a bit rushed. I was looking at it and there are 3 problems;
1. Excel cell cannot contain that many characters (yeah I know XD) so input would have to be split which I guess would be doable but not that convenient. Or excel would have to be ditched altogether.
2. This one might be important. I have noticed something that I didn't before; bones have assigned some verticles to them with some data. But not by either ID or XYZ pos. More like min/max area but I didn't check that.
3. A matter of craftsmanship. Original morphs contains only verticles that has its xyz pos changed in relation to the base model. Looking at hands example, 97 verts base model, 89 verts in morphs. The ones that aren't changing are at the base of hand model, hidden in the sleeve. I have changed them all since it wasn't that much of a difference but for facial morphs where out of ~1100 verts only 24 are changed it won't cut.

On a bright side, my method still holds true I'll try to make some proof of concept without morps or something to at least see what's about point 2.

Original phone it's just a box with blurred texture, this model is real produces and used in the USA in 1920-1950 years.
It's not exactly the vision of MARR, but impossible to create, a "final version" of a model that consists of a few boxes.
I think in this case better use a realistic model.